Transmedia and Digital Storytelling

- Overview

Transmedia storytelling (also known as transmedia storytelling or multi-platform storytelling) is the technique of using current digital technologies to tell a single story or story experience across multiple platforms and formats. 

From a production perspective, transmedia storytelling involves creating content that uses a variety of technologies to penetrate into the daily lives of viewers. To achieve this engagement, transmedia production will develop stories across multiple media formats to deliver unique content in each pipeline. Importantly, these are not only connected (obviously or subtly) but also narratively synchronized with each other. 

Transmedia storytelling has many benefits, including: 

• Reaching a broader audience: Transmedia storytelling can help brands reach a wider audience by catering to different preferences.
• Brand loyalty and advocacy: The immersive nature of transmedia storytelling can help audiences feel a sense of belonging. Fans can become advocates, sharing their discoveries and insights with others.
• Combining traditions and new trends: Transmedia storytelling can be used as a new format of digital journalism, combining traditions and new trends.

Some tips for transmedia storytelling include:

• Engaging people through compelling characters
• Creating the right content at the right time
• Building a community where fans feel connected to each other and the IP
• Understanding the four Ps: pervasive, persistent, participatory, and personalized

Please refer to the following for more information:

• Wikipedia: Transmedia Storytelling

- Digital Storytelling

Digital storytelling is a short form of digital media production that allows everyday people to share aspects of their story. The media used may include multi-platform content creation and distribution models, using online, video, audio, mobile and social media, live events, and interactive and immersive technologies which individuals can use to tell a story or present an idea.

Transmedia storytelling is the technique of telling stories across multiple platforms and formats using current digital publishing methods – where we develop narrative across multiple forms of media, in order to deliver unique pieces of related content via our chosen channels.

- Transmedia and Technology

Transmedia storytelling uses multiple media platforms tell a coordinated story across time. Have you ever read a book, seen a movie, watched a television show, or played a game that centred around different aspects of a larger story or universe? 

You may be familiar with popular examples of such universes like Star Wars, Marvel, and The Walking Dead (to name a few). How do the professionals develop such expansive narratives? How do they ensure that each element stays true to the original story? How do they innovatively use different technologies to share the stories, grow audiences and create an active and involved community of fans? 

More and more, we are also engaging with elements or franchises of larger and more complex stories across a much more diverse range of platforms like interactive web experiences, social media communities, mobile devices, theme parks, and even augmented and virtual reality. 

Transmedia storytelling takes advantage of the way the human brain processes information and constructs meaning: synthesizing, linking and exploring multiple sources.  A major challenge that current and future storytellers face is being able to engage different audiences in a story that is seamlessly told across all of these different platforms. 

Transmedia stories can be simple, across a few low-tech media platforms or break down the barriers between the story and reality by bringing the narrative out into the real world, in the form of complex and exciting alternative reality games (ARGs), where participants engage with narrative elements and characters using real world locations as part of the storyworld.

- Transmedia Storytelling

It goes by many names: transmedia storytelling, transmedia narrative, cross-media seriality, and multiplatform storytelling. Transmedia storytelling is the practice of designing, sharing, and participating in a cohesive story experience across multiple traditional and digital delivery platforms - for entertainment, advertising and marketing, or social change. 

Multiple narratives come togethr, constructing a larger storyworld.  Each media piece - whether it’s a comic, advertisement, social media post, novel, video game, mobile app, or a film - functions as a standalone story experience - complete and satisfying. Like a giant puzzle, each piece contributes to a larger narrative. These storyline threads are woven together and are in sync with each other – closely linked by the structure that was envisioned within the conceptual story-world ecosystem.

The process is cumulative and each piece adds richness and detail to the story world, such as character backstories and secondary plotlines. This makes for a richer audience experience and multiple access points.  

For entertainment, it lets creators weave together several stories over time, expanding ways for the audience to engage, immerse and enjoy a larger experience. For brands, it creates more ways for consumers to imagine themselves with the product or service, triggering emotional connection and personal investment through identity and aspiration.  

Transmedia storytelling is fully participatory. The audience is actively involved, elevated to social and creative collaborators. When people actively participate, either through content creation or following a trail across assets, they become stakeholders in the transmedia experience alongside the brand or cause. The unfolding story design creates the motivation to engage with other participants, seek out other parts of the story, and contribute to the narrative by adding content.  

Beverly Hills, California - Civil Engineering Discoveries]

- AI Storytelling and Story Generators

AI storytelling is a new field that uses machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP) to create stories. AI story generators use ML algorithms to analyze text datasets and understand narrative structures, character development, and linguistic patterns. When a user inputs a theme, character, or plot point, the AI synthesizes this information to construct a story. 

AI storytelling can have a key impact on storytelling through personalized narratives. For example, Charisma uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) to interpret player responses in order to send players down the most appropriate story path.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) story generators work by analyzing large datasets of text and using machine learning algorithms to understand narrative structures, character development, and linguistic patterns. When a user inputs a theme, character, or plot point, the AI synthesizes this information to construct a coherent and engaging story.

- OpenAI's Sora - A Generative AI Storytelling Model

OpenAI's Sora is a generative artificial intelligence (AI) model that can create realistic videos from text prompts. Sora can create videos up to a minute long, and can also create "deepfakes". 

Sora has storytelling capabilities, allowing users to draw and animate their ideas. Security researchers are currently testing Sora to ensure it's safe and secure before it's released to the public. A small group of visual artists, designers, and filmmakers have also been given access to Sora. 

OpenAI is an AI company that was founded in 2015 by Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and other AI researchers and technologists. OpenAI's goal is to develop an artificial general intelligence (AGI) that is as smart as a person.

[More to come ...]